Obama the Unready?

posted at 12:10 pm on February 23, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

I’m a bit of a history buff — not a historian on the level of a Doris Kearns Goodwin or even a Newt Gingrich, but a curious explorer of history nonetheless. One fascinating figure is Aethelred (or Edward) the Unready, one of the pre-Norman kings of England, whose name belies his reputation, thanks to an imperfect translation of Old English. The names Aethelred and Edward both mean “wise counselor” or “wise guardian,” but Aethelred was not considered wise, or inclined to follow good counsel. He acted rashly with bad consequences according to chronicles after his reign (which have recently come under scrutiny, it should be noted), earning him the sobriquet of someone who “recks not his own rede,” or council — and hence “un-rede-y,” or unready as it comes to us now. The nickname is a critical play on words, meaning that Aethelred was most un-Aethelredy as king.

The reason that bit of history comes to mind is Barack Obama’s new corporate-tax reform plan, which I first noted yesterday. As Jim Pethokouis noted and I pointed out, the plan actually contradicts the advice from Obama’s own Jobs Council, which warned that the US needed to go with a territorial approach to corporate taxes in order to compete with our trading partners. Instead of following the advice of his own panel, Obama went in the opposite direction.

We’ll get back to that in a minute. As it happens, Mitt Romney released his revamped tax plan yesterday, which simplifies his economic approach and provides a stark contrast between Republican economics and Obama’s reliance on gimmicks to fund his hobby horses. I compare the two plans in my column today for The Fiscal Times:

Both Obama and Romney propose lowering the corporate tax rate from its current world-highest 35 percent, Obama to 28 percent, Romney to 25 percent . Obama’s rate change doesn’t change the competitive position of the US by much; with combined state and federal taxes, we would go from the first-highest tax burden on business to fourth. On top of that, though, Obama proposes to close enough “loopholes” to increase tax revenues from corporations by $250 billion – increased costs that businesses would pass onto consumers and workers in the form of higher prices and lower wages. Obama also wants to do what almost no other nation does, which is impose a tax on profits earned overseas. Obama’s “global minimum tax” is based on his notion of fairness, and it goes against the advice of Obama’s own Jobs Council, called into being last year for Obama to claim that he was focused like a laser on job creation, as well as Obama’s own deficit commission …

Where will the money go? According to an analysis by Pethokoukis, part of it funds a decrease in the corporate tax rate for manufacturers to 25 percent. Much of it will fund more of Obama’s new stimulus plans for “clean energy,” a boondoggle that so far has produced bankruptcies and massive taxpayer losses at Solyndra and other Obama-favored green-tech firms. Instead of making American companies more competitive on the world stage and encouraging more investment at home, Obama’s plan shakes down businesses to generate another slush fund for more gimmicky interventions.

Contrast that with Romney’s approach. His plan also lowers the corporate tax rate and closes some tax breaks, but it also reforms the US corporate tax to a territorial system that matches the approach of our partners. That would allow American companies to bring profits back to the US without a tax penalty, allowing for investment in our own economy. The decreased costs would also make American companies more competitive overseas, and the simpler tax code puts smaller businesses at less of a disadvantage in compliance efforts. Elimination of the corporate AMT, with its rules on depreciation costs, would spur more capital investment by corporations, providing even more of an economic boost.

The contrast between the two plans could not be more plain. Romney provides a path to a high-growth economy by simplifying taxes and allowing people to keep more of what they earn, and spend it more freely. Obama’s plan seizes more capital from businesses so that he and his team can choose where investment goes and who benefits from it, rather than focus on growth and prosperity.

Romney’s plan is actually very good — aggressively cutting taxes and applying supply-side, pro-growth policies. It puts Romney at least into the same class as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, with a lot less complication to get in the way of the message. Pethokoukis considers it Reagan-like:

Romney wants to a) slash income tax rates by 20 percent, b) lower corporate tax rates by 30 percent while slashing corporate welfare, c) reform Social Security by gradually raising the retirement age and indexing benefit growth for higher-income retirees to inflation instead of wages, d) create a premium-support Medicare system for younger workers, and e) cut government spending by $500 billion during his first term. If Romney does become the Republican nominee, he would certainly be running on the boldest GOP agenda since Reagan ’80, maybe ever.

It also gives Republicans more of a reason to vote for Romney than against his competition. Romney missed an opportunity to emphasize this in last night’s debate, but he’ll roll it out officially tomorrow in a policy speech in Detroit.

Let’s get back to Obama’s plan. What’s remarkable about it is that Obama has created two outside economic panels in the last two years, and ignored recommendations from both of them. His deficit commission returned a tough and specific plan for shrinking spending and deficits, but Obama produced a budget that spent more and did nothing to restrain entitlement spending. Now his Jobs Council tells Obama how to make the economy grow and create jobs, and Obama does the exact opposite.

Why bother to create these panels at all if Obama isn’t interested in advice? The panels provided him just enough political cover to get by when deficits and jobs became crippling political issues. It’s a form of theater; Oh, look, Obama’s created an expert panel on [fill in the blank]! He must be focused like a laser on that problem! By the time Obama has to actually put a plan in place, he hopes that no one pays attention to what the panels recommended. Instead of listening to the advice of his own counsel, Obama recklessly plans on his tax-and-spending spree to fund his expansive view of government and its power to dictate outcomes in American lives.

Obama and Aethelred have much in common, including disastrous results.

Update: Keith Hennessey notes that one Obama pledge turned out to be vaporware:

The President’s Buffett Rule is vaporware. … The President has not actually proposed a tax policy that fits this principle. Neither his budget nor the tax proposals released by Treasury include any policy specifics to establish a new minimum 30% tax rate for those with income > $1M. …

When you call on Congress to enact a policy that you describe only as a principle, you generally send Treasury officials to engage with the chairs of the tax writing committees to help draft legislation. Other than the President’s public comments I can find no evidence that the Administration is actually trying to get Congress to enact the Buffett Rule in legislation. The logical explanation is that President Obama wants Congress not to act so that he has a rhetorical weapon to use against Republicans in an election year.

Administration officials appear to be describing a policy that would replace the Alternative Minimum Tax, yet their budget also contains no proposal to repeal or replace the AMT.

And yet the President is calling on Congress to enact his vaporware proposal today.

Hey, he’s too busy coming up with the bold plans to actually put them into action.

Blowback

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Romney missed an opportunity to emphasize this in last night’s debate

I heard him mention his plan and thought he got some applause for it too. Maybe he didn’t “emphasize” it enough as you suggest though. At least it’s better than the one he had with 17,000 points in it that Cain mocked for being too complicated.

It doesn’t take much to reach that level. Goodwin is a plagerist with a following. Whenever the left wants to justify anything in the White House they will trot her out to make the case that every President committed adultery, Constitutional infringement, whatever. I have no respect for her as a historian as she (like Douglas Brinkley) is really a social commentator pretending to be historian. Her work is not to be taken too seriously as an academic product.

Instead of having taxpayers pay the salaries and expenses associated with all these government councils and commissions that Barry keeps appointing (and then ignoring), why don’t we just buy Barry a big rubber stamp. That’s all he really wants from these guys anyway, and it would save taxpayers a lot of money.

Or maybe Obama’s like Edward the Confessor – he does confess a lot of liberalism and leftist goals and ideals.

Though, instead of no heir, Edward will have no second term.

And whereas Mitt Romney thinks he should be the rightful heir a la Harold Godwinson, a “bastard” might take the throne. Never-the-less, there will be a battle between three takers. Romney, Gingrich and Santorum.

“Instead of listening to the advice of his own counsel, Obama recklessly plans on his tax-and-spending spree to fund his expansive view of government and its power to dictate outcomes in American lives.”

But we were all called racists for uttering such an inflammatory phrase.

Obama the unready? Well, at the very least his is unwise. Selecting for his councils the most corrupt, most-self-centered, anti-American money-grubbing leftists who could possibly exist and still not be indicted and adjudicated sentenced co-conspirators in a Nation of laws.

Or maybe Obama is not un-ready nor unwise. Maybe he and his councils are all part and parcel to the same liberty-destroying evil?

Ed,
As a history buff, would you ever depict the founding of our nation as being an attempt to bring the British Empire “to its knees”?

I wouldn’t think so, but this is relevant to Obama.

You see, Obama doesn’t see the founding of our nation as being about Creator-endowed rights and freedom from tyranny. Rather, this is how he sees it:

But my journey is part of a larger journey – one shared by all who’ve ever sought to apply the values of their faith to our society. It’s a journey that takes us back to our nation’s founding, when none other than a UCC church inspired the Boston Tea Party and helped bring an Empire to its knees.

I really don’t know why bho bothers to make a speech about anything? Just have previous speeches run by the bhopress because they are all the same on every issue! I guess bho feels he needs his snotty, nose in the air, face on the tube daily! OH and getting taxpayers to pay for him going to states on campaign and fund raising and free tube time!
L

Instead of listening to the advice of his own counsel, Obama recklessly plans on his tax-and-spending spree to fund his expansive view of government and its power to dictate outcomes in American lives.

My how the HA mantra has changed. Three years ago, the constant lecture was that we needed to give Obama a chance. That he promised to be a post-partisan centrist and we needed to take him at his word that that was the kind of administration he was going to create. I didn’t buy it then and even drifted off to read other sites for over a year because I got so sick of seeing the lectures about how Obama wasn’t as bad as some were saying. I think those of us who were a tad more critical have been proven right.

None of this will matter after Scooter bombs Iran sometime between now and November. He’s just waiting for the most effective PR moment. The MSM will kick into high gear and his economic track record will only be found on the back pages,….in very small print. It’s the ace he is holding.

Obama is, indeed, following the advice of all these panels. The panels are formed to find ways to help the economy of the United States. Obama has the opposite goal in mind, so when a panel gives advice, he pivots 180 figuring that is the way to realize HIS agenda. He uses the panels to figure out the way that would HELP us, then he deliberately hurts us.

Obama’s policies are deliberately designed to cut American down to size. It’s Cloward-Piven writ large. Obama just has to convince enough voters that he’s trying and is being thwarted by Republicans so that he can get another four years of tears and fears.

that’s a lot of time to go too far for enough people to have had enough.

it’s going to be a close race to see if obama’s smoke and mirrors cant keep the white house in face of his ego and desires. i have no hope the gop will do any better than a we’re not obama campaign at this point.

nope..but that was over the line. The ESPN thing was a metaphor, commonly used

ted c on February 23, 2012 at 12:39 PM

I’m arguing that was he (or she) said was helpful. Very little of what we post here actually is. But conservatives should stop looking for grievance offense behind every corner. Dems should have lost their right to make a stink when they called Bush a chimp. Obama deserves is so much more – and that has nothing to do with his skin color.

Wow! $125 billion per year off of what is now $3.8 trillion in spending. Or is it $125 billion off the current baseline projected amounts, which would go something like $4.0 billion, $4.2 billion, $4.4 billion, ect. Either way, my leg is in full tingle mode.

Interesting. When Romney first announced his new plan (during Rush’s show), his tax cut was 20% across the board, except for the top 1%. Romney stated his reason for exempting the top 1% was to prevent adding to the deficit. Rush heard this and made the point that Romney was using OWS language and that cutting tax rates across the board would actually increase revenues.

By the time the debate started last night, the part about the 1% was gone from Romney’s plan, and when Newt brought it up, Romney acted as if he’d never heard of it.

It doesn’t take much to reach that level. Goodwin is a plagerist with a following. Whenever the left wants to justify anything in the White House they will trot her out to make the case that every President committed adultery, Constitutional infringement, whatever. I have no respect for her as a historian as she (like Douglas Brinkley) is really a social commentator pretending to be historian. Her work is not to be taken too seriously as an academic product.

Happy Nomad on February 23, 2012 at 12:17 PM

She’s considered by the Left to be a “Historian Rock Star”, but that just shows how shallow they all are. She didn’t even get published until after she married her husband Richard, who was a true Democrat Hero: JFK aide/speechwriter, and later an aide to LBJ. That’s where the two met, BTW, as she was an aide to him and after he left office she helped him write his own book. He is a much better historian than she is, and actually concluded a year before he left office that Bill Clinton was a Total Failure as President.

The only respect for Doris I have as a “historian” is re. her work with LBJ as well as her writings about baseball, which are just as good if not better than that twit George Wills’. She was the first-ever female writer to gain entry to the Boston Red Sox locker room, and she also wrote a great book about growing up with her beloved Brooklyn Bums.

Emperor Zero is completely clueless about the manner in which things actually work. All he knows well are his deep racism and ideology. His beliefs and world view.

He really does desire to destroy our country. Thats what “fundamental change” actually means in real terms. His vison of that America is a disgusting and frightening wasteland.

He will perpetrate a lot of evil in the name of “fairness.” Just like others preceding him using that same schtick. Zero’s handlers use his ideology and racism to manipulate him. He has to know that and it has to really burn.

Well except for those awesomely expensive vacations. Yeah the perks are nice.

None of this will matter after Scooter bombs Iran sometime between now and November. He’s just waiting for the most effective PR moment. The MSM will kick into high gear and his economic track record will only be found on the back pages,….in very small print. It’s the ace he is holding.

Oy vey! Don’t you people do any of your own homework? Of course it’s a good tax plain. In fact it’s a great tax plan. And it is the same plan, minus some clarification on where he would set the new marginal rates on income, that he announced months ago at the start of his campaign. I am so tired of people all over the place who have never gone over what Mitt proposed and has stood by from the beginning of his campaign.

It’s why I became and remain such a strong supporter of Romney! I posted links to it over and over on this site and every time the subject is brought up I hear the same groans about how Mitt has no tax plan.

You’re great Ed, but in this case you’ve been as poor as the rest of the media in failing to take the slightest notice of the plan that is at the heart of the number 1 contender’s platform until now!

lool :-) the ‘resident caca’ thing made me roll off my office chair…that’s my 3-year old niece line of attack, when she gets angry at someone she calls them ‘caca’ :-), she also tells them in earnest that they are ugly :-)…

Gingrich’s plan received the praise from Art Laffer, author of the “Laffer Curve.”

Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Gingrich’s flat tax proposals—along with his proposed balanced budget amendment—would put a quick stop to overspending and return America to fiscal soundness. No other candidate comes close to doing this.

Santorum looked like my teenage son last night. Eyes darting around as if he’s about to get grounded; looking for his mom to cover his imagined error. If looking insecure on stage an advantage then “Go Santorum”.

Art Laffer is terrific within his field of expertise. Specifically, there is nobody better to go to get an idea of how much revenue a tax plan will bring in to the treasury based on analysis which factors in human behavior. But he will be the first to tell you that he is no judge of the political viability or acceptability of a tax plan. Newt is offering a gimmicky hodgepodge of “things conservatives would like to hear.” It is ridiculous to think that the capital gains tax will just be done away with and the corporate rate set to 12.5% in our great-great grand childrens’ lifetime, let alone in ours. And quite frankly such a plan would be incredibly unfair to people whose income is derived from working.

I believe Art Laffer was on team that helped develop Newt’s plan. I believe I remember Laffer admitting to that on Cavuto’s show a few month’s ago, when plan originally unveiled. Don’t bet the house on my memory; but don’t bet much against it…

Obama wasn’t “unready”. Indeed, he was ready to go full steam ahead with his plan to remake America with a European flavor. As Rush has been saying since nearly the beginning of the Obama regime, this has all been ON PURPOSE!!!

Obama is such a narcissist that his Cabinet is only a show and to give his friends a job not to give him advice. When the situations require a difficult decision he walks away hoping the problem solves itself. He and his supposed staff is one third of the Government but in actuality he is the one third while the other two thirds do nothing to curb his dictatorial rants. Congress and the Supreme Court seem to sit idly by wondering what to do, so does the public wonder the same thing.

I’m a bit of a history buff — not a historian on the level of a Doris Kearns Goodwin or even a Newt Gingrich, but a curious explorer of history nonetheless.

..hahahahahaha..hohohohohoh..hehhehehehehe..respectfully, you;re such a kidder, Ed. I mena I have nop doubt you are a good historian but you do yourself ill comparing yourself to a plagiarizer (Goodwin) and a whore/consultant (Gingrich).

..you are better than them.

(Not being snotty, It’s my respect for you and your efforts at HA and your considerable talent at spewing out prose.)

I heard a sound byte on Rush yesterday with Romney talking about how his plan retains the “progressiveness” of the tax code. I didn’t listen any further…if he can’t stop using those bullturd terms to describe his tax plan, he doesn’t deserve to be the nominee.

We never heard Ronaldus Magnus say progressive, not even once.

Those advisors of Romney’s will scuttle him yet. And I’m beginning to think that the problems we have with Romney are more from those advisors (those former McCainiacs who hated Sarah) than from him.

The tax plan sounds good….he just does not need to describe it as “progressive”. He might as well call it cancer.

Hey, if the cap gains rate was 12.5% like Newt says it should be, there would be more people working for an income. This is exactly Conservative philosophy. MJBrutus, are you a liberal?

NOMOBO on February 23, 2012 at 3:43 PM

No, I am a strong, proud fiscal conservative. That means that I understand that while lowering corporate taxes is great, it can be overdone, especially when cap gains taxes are eliminated. Consider the case of Romney, whose income is almost all from investment income. His money is currently taxed at the corporate rate of 35% before he sees a penny of it. It is then taxed at 15% as gains. Is that too high? I think so.

Now consider where he would be under Newt’s moronic plan. His money would be taxed at the corporate rate of 12.5% and that’s it! When most taxpayers are paying at least 15% effectively this is a rape of the middle class. What’s more, Mitt would have no payroll tax liability where most of us are paying in to SS and Medicare. But, of course, he’s still eligible for the benefits!

Newt’s plan is stupid on steroids. And he knows damned well that it would never pass because it so egregiously unbalanced. In a word, when he says that’s what he would do, he is lying his a$$ off.

Massengill really should snatch this guy up as a spokes person after his term is up. I can see the commercial…slow pan up an idyllic suburban street, in his driveway stands Barak, bucket of soapy water and a hose,… washing a mammoth.